'CSI: NY': Anna Belknap surprised to be back for Season 9

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Now in its ninth year, the CBS crime drama faced the very real possibility of ending last spring, with its season finale — in which forensics team leader Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) was mortally wounded — suggesting the cast and crew were braced to wrap things up for good.

Instead, “CSI: Miami”became the part of the franchise that was canceled, and Belknap has gotten to continue as New York police detective and lab expert Lindsay Monroe Messer.

“I thought for sure it was the end,” she tells Zap2it. “I really did. We had been close [to cancellation] the year before, so we all thought, ‘Well, we were lucky to get another year.’

“That last time we were all together, we were taking a lot of pictures. It’s a huge chunk of all our lives, and I was obviously hoping we’d come back, but I didn’t want to hope too much. I just really wasn’t sure.”

The current “CSI; NY” round has offered a bigger dose of Lindsay’s family life, with recent episodes focusing on her as a mother and a daughter. Belknap, who has been with the show since its second year, is glad it’s letting in more of its characters’ personal lives … even as she admits she’s still working on balancing her own life as a steadily working actress and a mother of two.

“It’s always hard,” she allows, “as everyone who has kids knows. I always realize when I’m at work that I do need to get away from the house, that it’s important for me to have a life outside. At the same time, when I’m having a really long day, I’m like, ‘I have to go back and be with my kids! What are they doing? How are they?’ It’s always a struggle for me, that thing of trying to feel like you’re not letting anyone down too much.”